Important to remember where these allegations originate from.
Timnit Gebru was fired from Google after threatening to quit unless Google reveled the identities of the reviewers of her paper that was not received well while accusing them of sex/race based discrimination.
You can find some of the experiences of her from previous colleagues. You'll find the toxicity that she used in her time there and how she is picking the race/sex card on every situation. This is likely a continuation of that.
Not that the allegations can't be true, but people like this are really diluting the message and making it hard to tell the legitimate from exaggerated hit pieces.
That makes no sense. If she were as you described, there would have been more people coming forward and exposing her. Google is facing a roiling PR crisis: if there were a bunch of people who truly thought she “used race/sex card for every situation” we would have almost certainly heard about it.
Instead what we have are articles in rather respectable publications describing an incredibly toxic culture at Google, and shifting statements from Google itself as it seeks to try and contain the fallout of the Pandora’s box of racism that has been opened.
An excellent reminder that (particularly as a big company) you shouldn't do anything unless you'd be happy with it appearing on a newspaper's front page.
Something sounds wrong with that logic. I'm not entirely sure what, maybe its the suggestion that you should always be afraid of doing anything that the media might not agree with.
Whenever politicians, especially "controversial" ones say or do something, news articles happily provide "context" in the form of other things they've said or done that might anchor your perception of this latest thing.
Here, the anchoring wrt Timnit Gebru goes so far as:
Dr Gebru, whose firing led to an international wave of criticism of Google and widespread support from her colleagues
This reminds me of a truism that most people seem to forgot...
HR is never your friend.
HR is there to protect the company and nothing more. What's worse, even if you try running an ethical one, if you grow big enough at some point you start hiring directly into HR people with experience with HR elsewhere, and that means importing the same bad practices - this is not a defense of Google, it's more a reminder to all of us that it can happen even in your own company.
What grates me is that HR is full of people who go out of their way to appear as your friend. It's plain deception.
If they were merely unapproachable and grumpy that wouldn't be so bad. But they put on their smiley faces, ask about your well-being etc all while screwing you behind closed doors.
Which applies to all areas. As your organization grows it more and more attracts people who typically just switch jobs between organizations of the same size, and bring their culture, "best practices" that are typically the worst, approaches to work and other values with them.
At the same time you can see founders caring less and less about what's going on.
Is there a way to stop this? I don't think so for as long as there's a lot of investment money in circulation. Raising money for any more or less successful tech business is so cheap these days that founders rarely think of the alternatives, such as not raising and staying lean.
And also that choices of HR aren't easy. Should they've fired the other person for a remark that might've been with good intent? That would be at least as damaging.
And they probably had a talk with other people involved, not all actions are disclosed to the affected employee.
Well, the comment could be made about work more generally, at least at any company that's bigger than say 5-10 people: Your work is not your friend, and even your colleagues who are your friends outside of work are not your friends while at work.
HR can very much act with your best interests at heart... so long as those best interests align with the company's best interests.
I remember many years ago working at a large company that was proud to display "HR Help Hotline" posters at conspicuous locations in all offices. We used to joke that the number was connected to an automated P45 printer....
The only time you'd see one of the HR folks about you knew someone was going to get fired - it was the only reason they'd ever show up at our site.
Also, these threads often cause comments that have no clue about the reality of black people. For those who are ok with videos, here are some good but enjoyable ones. You may use 'NewPipe' from fdroid or the youtube-dl command line utility to download them:
[8] Also the 1965 Baldwin and Buckley debate on the theme "Has the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLUbKebYvc
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar regardless of how strongly you feel about something. It's not what this site is for, and it evokes considerably worse from others.
I can't even imagine what this comment means/how it's used. There is really not enough context here. "expected?" Like the first time they met them?
It seems like Google HR's initial response of "assume good intent"[0] seems reasonable, absent additional details:
> Cruz, who is Mexican American and prefers to be identified by the pronouns they/them, reported the incident to human resources in 2019 where personnel told them they should “assume good intent,” Cruz recalled in an interview. Unsatisfied, Cruz asked human resources to look deeper into the incident, and an HR official said an investigation into the matter had been closed, Cruz said.
I feel like the journalist failed to actually convince us that this was something newsworthy.
I was once called racist because I was surprised that someone I had only talked to via irc was black. I come from Scotland, there was maybe 10 black people in my town of 30,000 people. In the IT security scene most people are white. A few years later, I met a woman at one of the meetups she laughed about how everyone was surprised she was female because she aware everyone just assumes you're a guy.
Honestly, I think some people just want to be a victim in some way. Gives them an excuse as to why things aren't going there way.
The key is in "expected". Why did someone expect another person to be of a certain color? Note that the person in question is named Benjamin Cruz, and has a skin tone more or less consistent with their name [1], and not especially dark.
So the question is why the expectation of "being white" was there. A reasonable interpretation (with limited knowledge, of course) is that they expected Cruz to be white because they expect mostly white people to be hired at their level. That is clearly racism, as you're attributing intelligence to race.
Of course there are other interpretations, but I wouldn't say that 'you should seek help if you see racism' is helpful at all.
I've heard "Wow, you speak English better than I expected!", "You have no accent at all!" and similar said to Indian and Asian colleagues, some of these colleagues were born in the US and for all intents and purposes shared the same American childhood as you and me. Is it racist? I don't know. It does imply a ready and closely-held stereotype, though.
There are probably situations where it's an innocuous remark, but surely you can see that depending on the tone and what is implied, it might be extremely offensive, not very different from saying something like "oh, you're a woman, that's certainly surprising because women are awful at math and coding!"
It's a pretty weird comment though, it's hard to judge without knowing more context. Whether this is actually racism or not it's hard for me to imagine a context where such a remark would be appropriate at work. In general I think it's good advice to avoid commenting on your coworker's physical appearance unless you have a very good reason to do so.
IMO it's also a bit rude for you to say that "one should seek help" when you don't really have a good understanding of the situation at hand.
Obviously these HR guys have no moral compass. Their company literally delegated that task to these individuals who they then sacked. Ironic. I need to figure this one out...
> In all of Google, I'm certain that there are at least thirty (1 in ~3500) mentally ill employees
Just curious about this statistics. Is 1 in ~3500 the prevalence of mental illnesses in the general population? If so, why would you assume that this frequency would remain the same in a leading tech company which selects its employees through a rigorous (one would hope) interview process, which might significantly skew the sample? It may be much lower than in the general population. Or, alternatively, much higher.
This is a story based on an NBC interview [1], which was published on Sunday - linked in the article and referenced several times. This article follows a wider story that can be traced in the "More on this story" section at the end of the article, with additional articles published in December and February.
No. There was a story in HN about this issue yesterday and the BBC journalists read HN and other sources for topical stories.
The British establishment is not as cohesive as you think. The BBC is more likely to be mildly Republican and anti monarchist than not, reflecting the intelligencia.
Modern Britain is a racially diverse, mixed culture and this google story is interesting because it poses questions people are interested in.
[+] [-] disruptalot|5 years ago|reply
Timnit Gebru was fired from Google after threatening to quit unless Google reveled the identities of the reviewers of her paper that was not received well while accusing them of sex/race based discrimination.
You can find some of the experiences of her from previous colleagues. You'll find the toxicity that she used in her time there and how she is picking the race/sex card on every situation. This is likely a continuation of that.
Not that the allegations can't be true, but people like this are really diluting the message and making it hard to tell the legitimate from exaggerated hit pieces.
[+] [-] pm90|5 years ago|reply
Instead what we have are articles in rather respectable publications describing an incredibly toxic culture at Google, and shifting statements from Google itself as it seeks to try and contain the fallout of the Pandora’s box of racism that has been opened.
[+] [-] steeef|5 years ago|reply
You can find plenty of other ex-Googlers saying the same thing:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-advised-mental...
[+] [-] AndrewDucker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marshmallow_12|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simmerup|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brauhaus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcus_holmes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Chris2048|5 years ago|reply
Whenever politicians, especially "controversial" ones say or do something, news articles happily provide "context" in the form of other things they've said or done that might anchor your perception of this latest thing.
Here, the anchoring wrt Timnit Gebru goes so far as:
So, only criticism of her firing then?Yet I recall a post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25292386
Google doesn't consider that they fired her; She posted an ultimatum and they accepted it as a resignation.
It's also not clear if 'encouraged to make use of "therapy resources"' is the same as medical leave, which is what the article purports to be about.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] p_l|5 years ago|reply
HR is never your friend.
HR is there to protect the company and nothing more. What's worse, even if you try running an ethical one, if you grow big enough at some point you start hiring directly into HR people with experience with HR elsewhere, and that means importing the same bad practices - this is not a defense of Google, it's more a reminder to all of us that it can happen even in your own company.
[+] [-] switch007|5 years ago|reply
If they were merely unapproachable and grumpy that wouldn't be so bad. But they put on their smiley faces, ask about your well-being etc all while screwing you behind closed doors.
[+] [-] mojuba|5 years ago|reply
At the same time you can see founders caring less and less about what's going on.
Is there a way to stop this? I don't think so for as long as there's a lot of investment money in circulation. Raising money for any more or less successful tech business is so cheap these days that founders rarely think of the alternatives, such as not raising and staying lean.
[+] [-] dx034|5 years ago|reply
And they probably had a talk with other people involved, not all actions are disclosed to the affected employee.
[+] [-] furyg3|5 years ago|reply
HR can very much act with your best interests at heart... so long as those best interests align with the company's best interests.
[+] [-] arethuza|5 years ago|reply
The only time you'd see one of the HR folks about you knew someone was going to get fired - it was the only reason they'd ever show up at our site.
[+] [-] dennis_jeeves|5 years ago|reply
One does have the option not to grow, and stick with only the right people, correct? The temptation to grow big I guess is huge.
[+] [-] greet11882|5 years ago|reply
Flagged thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26383977
Another: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26383160
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26374822
So many insensitive comments.
Google already had sexual harassment issues stemming from some top leaders in the past. They didn't get punished.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-...
https://qz.com/work/1326942/sergey-brin-started-google-with-...
Also, these threads often cause comments that have no clue about the reality of black people. For those who are ok with videos, here are some good but enjoyable ones. You may use 'NewPipe' from fdroid or the youtube-dl command line utility to download them:
[1] How to pretend systemic racism does not exist? (with eng subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ciwjHVHYg
[2] Let's talk about what it's like to be a black person in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD8mWq0Hdcw
[3] Let's talk about being armed and black. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL_IX8yX_JU
[4] How cops are trained to shoot you in your home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuzQrbio2Qw
Other resources include James Baldwin's books and documentaries. His 'The Fire Next Time' is just 120 pages [5].
'The Price of the Ticket' and 'I Am Not Your Negro' are good documentaries [6][7].
[5] https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Next-Time-James-Baldwin/dp/06797...
[6] https://www.amazon.com/James-Baldwin-Price-Ticket/dp/B01M25W...
[7] https://www.amazon.com/I-Am-Not-Your-Negro/dp/B01MR52U7T
[8] Also the 1965 Baldwin and Buckley debate on the theme "Has the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLUbKebYvc
English subtitle download: https://amara.org/en/videos/dGI1henIPVYS/en/1338731/
[+] [-] Guthur|5 years ago|reply
This is not fucking racism, and maybe one should seek help if a question like this really affects you.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] snakeboy|5 years ago|reply
It seems like Google HR's initial response of "assume good intent"[0] seems reasonable, absent additional details:
> Cruz, who is Mexican American and prefers to be identified by the pronouns they/them, reported the incident to human resources in 2019 where personnel told them they should “assume good intent,” Cruz recalled in an interview. Unsatisfied, Cruz asked human resources to look deeper into the incident, and an HR official said an investigation into the matter had been closed, Cruz said.
I feel like the journalist failed to actually convince us that this was something newsworthy.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-advised-mental...
[+] [-] that_guy_iain|5 years ago|reply
Honestly, I think some people just want to be a victim in some way. Gives them an excuse as to why things aren't going there way.
[+] [-] gjulianm|5 years ago|reply
So the question is why the expectation of "being white" was there. A reasonable interpretation (with limited knowledge, of course) is that they expected Cruz to be white because they expect mostly white people to be hired at their level. That is clearly racism, as you're attributing intelligence to race.
Of course there are other interpretations, but I wouldn't say that 'you should seek help if you see racism' is helpful at all.
1: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-advised-mental...
[+] [-] devchix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stdbrouw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpxw|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TheRealSteel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simias|5 years ago|reply
IMO it's also a bit rude for you to say that "one should seek help" when you don't really have a good understanding of the situation at hand.
[+] [-] marshmallow_12|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rendall|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] azangru|5 years ago|reply
Just curious about this statistics. Is 1 in ~3500 the prevalence of mental illnesses in the general population? If so, why would you assume that this frequency would remain the same in a leading tech company which selects its employees through a rigorous (one would hope) interview process, which might significantly skew the sample? It may be much lower than in the general population. Or, alternatively, much higher.
[+] [-] gridder|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tweetle_beetle|5 years ago|reply
This is a story based on an NBC interview [1], which was published on Sunday - linked in the article and referenced several times. This article follows a wider story that can be traced in the "More on this story" section at the end of the article, with additional articles published in December and February.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-advised-mental...
[+] [-] ggm|5 years ago|reply
The British establishment is not as cohesive as you think. The BBC is more likely to be mildly Republican and anti monarchist than not, reflecting the intelligencia.
Modern Britain is a racially diverse, mixed culture and this google story is interesting because it poses questions people are interested in.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] robinduckett|5 years ago|reply